I Need A Puzzle(s)

[Morghen]

GM here. I'm not a puzzle guy. I think most of the time they don't make a lot of sense. Like, why would the evil wizard build his stronghold so that he has to walk down a corridor backwards every time he comes home? Or always has to have fresh water to pour into a specific dish, or solve a riddle, or play that ring stacking game, or whatever else.

And yet here I am, in need of a puzzle.

Easily Solvable Version Of My Problem:
Do you know where I can find a ton of puzzle ideas to copy/paste into my game? I'll buy a book of them if you know of a really great one.

If "The Huge Book Of Really Great TTRPG Puzzles" Doesn't Exist:
Here's the situation, broadly:
ArcanePunk setting has airships and streetlights and megacorps but fighters still use swords. PCs are digging around in a post-apocalyptic Dead Zone that has a bunch of undead hanging around.

Here are specifics:

The specific location is an industrial facility with adjacent executive building.
There's a creepy voice still making PA announcements from the day of the apocalypse. It's semi-aware and will modify announcements to reflect the PCs' movements/actions.
The industrial facility is split into two halves: Warehouse and Production.
The Warehouse side has a large network of wide pipes running above the floor. The pipes carry liquid from below for the production side. Or maybe they carry wastewater.
The Production portion of the facility has an elevator down to an extensive lower level where the company was producing small-batch Warforged on the downlow.
I'd love to make the PCs fix a few simple problems with the production line before the elevator will boot up.
I'm pretty set on making the PCs enter a password (they'll find in the executive building) to run the elevator.


So there it is. Please help.

[Vahnavoi]

There are a lot of books on puzzles, you can go to basically any library and loan your fill of them.

This said, your specific scenario would be best served not by a book on puzzles, but instead by experience of an industrial facility. You want players to solve a few problems to get an elevator running. Well let me tell you a few common reasons why an elevator might not be running:

Problem 1: main power is off.
Solution: the players need to recognize signposts leading to the main switch and/or power generator, or in absence of signposts, follow power conduits from the elevator to that switch.

Problem 2: main power is on but machine is not moving.
Solution: an emergency stop switch has been pressed and will not let the machine be operated before it is released. Depending on construction of machine, there may be multiple such switches.
Bonus round: either the "creepy voice" or undead workers are still carrying out workday routines from the time of disaster. Specifically, they are trying to carry out maintenance on the elevator. Safety guidelines mandate that an emergency stop switch be pressed before work, so if players release such a switch, the voice will order a worker to press it again.

Problem 3: main power is on, emergency stop switches are released, but machine is still not moving.
Solution: machine has a laser curtain or an optic sensor that is being blocked and hence it thinks something is obstructing motion of the elevator. The blockage has to be removed or the sensor bypassed for the machine to operate.
Bonus round: the blockage or sensor is not on the same level as the player characters. They will have to find a way to get around it remotely.

All of these problems are recursive with each piece of machinery. You say you want your players to fix a problem with production? Fine, the path to the elevator is obstructed by rubble and to remove it, players need to operate a construction crane used for moving casting molds across the production line, and all three problems above apply to the construction crane.

You can use the undead workers to both further obstruct players and to give them hints on what they need to do and how.

[Gnoman]

The "classical" solution to this would be to have damaged parts that need replaced. You want the power to come back on? You need to replace X number of bundles of broken wire (skill checks to locate, different skill checks to install), after finding spare wire (skill checks) or salvaging it (skill checks to identify where you can get away with it and different ones to actually do it with out breaking things worse), find Y machines that are malfunctioning and drawing too much power (skill checks to locate, different ones to fix). Or you could have some backup generators that need fueled and connected to the grid to power the elevator.

To make this more interesting you can make some of this happen "under fire" - there's enough hostile undead about that you need to have some of the PCs covering the ones doing the repair work, who are vulnerable. Finish this with a major boss fight at the last one.